DL Open Thread: Wednesday, August 17, 2022

Filed in Featured, Open Thread by on August 17, 2022

Why Does Mayor Mike Hate Wilmington’s Citizens?  I mean, some of its citizens, the ones who don’t live in the Highands.  We’re taking about selective towing, aka ‘takings’. The legal issue of ‘can they do it’ is one thing, the question of ‘why would they do it’ is another.  We all know the answer, don’t we?:

Nearly a year after attorneys filed a lawsuit against Wilmington and the private towing companies it contracts with claiming the city’s towing practices are unconstitutional, a federal judge advised attorneys the case will move forward.

According to the suit, the city allows private companies to tow legally parked cars that have unpaid parking tickets totaling over $200. If the owners do not pay the outstanding debt within 30 days, the tow companies can scrap the vehicles and keep the proceeds.

Attorneys from the Institute for Justice – a Virginia-based national law firm focused on limiting the size and scope of government power – representing Shaheed and Dickerson claim the city is violating the Takings Clause by allowing tow companies to sell or scrap a vehicle without the value being credited to the owners’ parking ticket debt, which, in turn, amounts to an excessive fine.

The constitutional challenges brought against Wilmington task attorneys with determining whether the city’s towing and impoundment practices are a police or public purpose.

Wilmington attorneys say the practices are a police function, therefore the Fifth Amendment’s Takings Clause does not apply, and the city does not have to compensate the owners for the scrapped cars. The federal clause protects citizens from government taking private property for a public use without just compensation.

The City doesn’t even try to defend why they do it.  Their answer is ‘Because we can.’  Might I add, ‘Because we need to hasten the gentrification process’?  This Amanda Fries is an excellent reporter.  Enjoy her work before she inevitably takes the next step in her career.

Cheney Loses.  So Does Palin, Maybe.  Cheney never had a chance.  Wyoming is a beautiful state, spoiled by the very few people who live there.  In Alaska, Mary Peltola, who is a Native Alaskan, appears to have edged Palin, and will fill out the unexpired term of Don Young, who had been in Congress even longer than Tom Carper.  The two will match up again in November for the upcoming two-year term.  Due to Alaska’s ranked-choice system, Palin could still win the special, and would likely be the favorite for November.

Did I Mention Wyoming?  The land-grabs of the ‘fabulously wealthy’:

America remains one of the last countries where so many individuals own colossal swaths of land, some controlling acreage larger than Delaware. The West, a lodestar in the nation’s story, holds an enduring allure for modern land barons. It’s where the notion of American exceptionalism and pioneer masculinity are burnished in myth, movies, television, land acquisition, country music laments and so much truck advertising. A dazzling ranch has become a weekend oasis for rich men — and they’re mostly men — to realize their cowboy dreams.

Americans have long looked West to enrich their holdings, panning for mineral rights. The Rockefellers accumulated massivefiefdoms of land, eventually donating much of their holdings to the National Park Service. Butthe pandemic prompted a Western land grab, withmoguls fleeing the cities for homes on the range. Demand remains high. The challenge is inventory. In this region of big spreads, there’s little.

As for the tax breaks:

Land adjacent to a national park or forest is coveted. Its owners can score a conservation easement, which limits development on the land and provides generous tax benefits.

“There’s this popular assumption that environmental conservation is an altruistic public good — [conservation easements] are a really useful mechanism and critical — but theeasements are also a vehicle for protecting wealth,” says Yale professor Justin Farrell, author of “Billionaire Wilderness: The Ultra-Wealthy and the Remaking of the American West.” Expensive land purchases “represent an enormous social, economic and environmental transformation of the region. Not a lot of people are invested in the community.”

Nobody, Except The RWNJ’s, Said Repealing Roe v. Wade Would Be Easy.  FloridaLouisiana.  The cruelty is the point.

The RWNJ Social Media Eco-System Explained.  So that ordinary folks can understand it.  Highly-recommended.

“I’ve been really immersed in this stuff since 2016, and I’m still routinely appalled, surprised and taken aback by some of the things I read on these platforms. And maybe the day I become inured to this stuff is the day I need to leave the biz. But I’m still really shocked by the things I read.

Look at the Pew Research polls that are out there about how many people believe the core tenets of QAnon. I think we’ve entered a new phase in which social media has altered and warped how we encounter information, how we process it, how we internalize what counts as the truth. It’s having significant impacts on our democracy.

I really do believe that social media is an accelerator…”

An accelerator of societal disintegration.

Yes, There’s A Rethug Attack On Education.  Yet another way to ensure the death of critical thinking skills:

The number of “educational gag orders” introduced has increased by 250% compared with 2021, according to PEN America, a non-profit organization that works to protect freedom of expression in the US, as Republican legislators have sought to censor discussion of race and LGBTQ issues from the classroom.

According to PEN, 137 of the gag orders, which it defines as “state legislative efforts to restrict teaching about topics such as race, gender, American history, and LGBTQ+ identities in K–12 and higher education”, have been introduced in 36 states so far this year. In 2021 the organization recorded 54 gag order bills in 22 states.

The bills, introduced by conservative lawmakers, hardly represent public demand. More than 70% of parents are satisfied with the education their children receive, according to a 2021 Gallup poll. Earlier this year a NPR survey found that fewer than 20% of parents are dissatisfied with the way their children are taught about gender and sexuality, and race.

Gotta run. Sending out some letters on behalf of Becca Cotto today.

What do you want to talk about?

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  1. Arthur says:

    A) IMHO social media is the worst thing to happen to society since, well people.
    B) Actual Wyominites? are decent hard working people. However, as mentioned the ruling class comes from NY & LA
    C) Being a teacher is a near impossible job now and imagine being a teacher in FLA and being told by the governor that all your schooling, training, etc is worthless and a teacher can be trained in 60 days

  2. bamboozer says:

    Florida, Texas and far too many other red states declared war on teachers and education and now face a dramatic shortage of teachers, not that they care as ignorance becomes them. Things will only get dramatically worse as the draconian laws these states have passed seek to criminalize teachers in a variety of ways that all reek of politics. In the mean time their merrily banning books as they seek to kiss Evangelical ass. My father was a teacher, as I was off to college he said “Well, you could always become a teacher”. Like hell I can dad.

    • puck says:

      Wait for it, next they will pass voucher laws because of the “failing public schools” and the Supreme Court Magisterium will bless the transfer of public funds to religious schools.